How Relational Practice Can Strengthen High-Quality Interactions in the Early Years (STAIRS and ShREC) - Part 1

Climbing STAIRS

The Education Endowment Foundation’s recently-published (2025) STAIRS model offers early years educators a simple and memorable framework for scaffolding children’s learning through high-quality interactions. It brings together six features of effective adult support: Sharing attention, Thriving together, Avoiding frustration, highlighting Important features, Reviewing progress and supporting Self-motivation. 

Its central message is that children learn best when adults provide sensitive, carefully judged support: helping enough for the child to succeed, while gradually stepping back as the child becomes more confident and independent.

Scaffolding children's learning in the early years: The STAIRS model

The aim of the STAIRS model is to provide educators with a simple and memorable set of strategies to embed research evidence into everyday practice.

The EEF STAIRS model for scaffolding children’s learning in the early years. Reproduced from the Education Endowment Foundation’s downloadable STAIRS resource. © Education Endowment Foundation.

This approach has a strong connection with the central principle of Paul Dix’s Early Years course: the behaviour and responses of the adult shape the emotional and relational conditions in which children learn. The relationship between the STAIRS model and the Paul Dix Early Years course can be seen most clearly by considering how each element of effective scaffolding is supported by consistent, relational adult practice.

EEF STAIRS element	What this means in practice	How the Paul Dix Early Years course supports it
Sharing attention	The adult gets alongside the child, follows their focus and establishes joint attention before intervening.	The course develops calm, emotionally available adult behaviour. It encourages practitioners to connect before correcting and to use positive noticing to focus on children’s engagement, effort and communication.
Thriving together	The adult creates a warm, encouraging interaction, allows thinking time and communicates confidence in the child.	Relational practice, predictable adult responses, positive noticing and calm language help children feel safe enough to explore, communicate and persevere.
Avoiding frustration	The adult notices when a child is becoming overwhelmed and adjusts the task, environment or level of support without removing all challenge.	The course covers distraction, redirection, additional needs, sensory audits and becoming a “sensory detective”. Practitioners consider what behaviour may be communicating and make appropriate adjustments.
Important features	The adult highlights what matters, models a strategy, reduces distractions and uses clear language to support understanding.	Modules on routines, rules and consistent language help adults replace lengthy explanations with familiar scripts, clear expectations and manageable routines.
Reviewing progress	The adult helps the child recognise what they achieved, which strategy worked and what they might try next.	Positive noticing makes effort and successful strategies visible. Restorative conversations also help children reflect, repair and learn from difficulties.
Self-motivation	The adult provides the “just right” amount of help and gradually steps back as the child becomes more independent.	Consistent routines and emotionally safe interactions support independence. Adults remain available without rescuing, over-directing or creating dependence.

N.B. The Paul Dix Early Years course has not been evaluated or endorsed by the EEF specifically as a STAIRS programme. However, the course has been endorsed and funded by the EEF for use in Best Practice Early Years Hubs, recognised for its focus on calm adult behaviour, relational practice, positive noticing, routines, consistent language, appropriate adjustment and growing independence is closely aligned with the conditions needed for practitioners to apply the STAIRS model effectively.

Why adult behaviour matters

Children learn how to behave from the adults around them. They watch how we respond when things go wrong, how we manage frustration, how we speak to others and whether our words match our actions. In early years settings, the adult is not simply managing behaviour. The adult is creating the emotional climate in which children learn, particularly from adult modelling of behaviours. 

When adults are calm, predictable and emotionally available, children feel safer. When children feel safe, they are more able to explore, communicate, take risks and recover from difficulty. If the adult becomes louder, more anxious or more reactive, the child’s distress can quickly increase. This is why the first behaviour we need to examine is our own. Relational practice does not mean having no boundaries. It means holding boundaries without humiliation, threat or emotional escalation. It means connecting before correcting, noticing what children are doing well and responding to unwanted behaviour with calm certainty.

Part 2 will be published in August.